What's the difference?

It seems as though we're equivocating between Charismatic and enthusiastic sometimes, whereas other times it refers to a specific movement.

Darth Bagel said:

So it's been alluded to at a couple different points here in TT, and I would like to hear a bit more about the differences in the Charismatic expression of faith within Traditional churches.

My only experience of it is under the umbrella of American Evangelicalism and I can tell you that I certainly do not like it one bit. I won't bother stringing together all of the adjectives I would use to describe it, but suffice it to say I think it does more harm than good. However, I've been given the impression that it looks very different under the auspices, of say, The Episcopal Church.

For my friends here who are members of Traditional churches (of any kind) can you point out any significant differences and similarities between the two forms of Charismatic Christianity (Evangelical vs. [Your Tradition)?

I suppose to establish a benchmark, when I think of Evangelical Charismatics I think of infamous groups like Bethel Church (home of Jesus Culture), The International House of Prayer, Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, the Lakeland Revivals and leaders/teachers like Joyce Meyer, Bill Johnson, Rick Joyner, Todd Bentley, Mike Bickle, Lou Engle, Scott Lively, etc. All of whom I think, frankly, absolutely ruin the Christian faith.

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Here's a good example of special charism in the Roman Catholic tradition:



That's the Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The story is that she had deeply sensual encounters with the divine.

This sort of ecstatic, charismatic, and mystical spirituality was fairly common throughout the late middle ages through the Renaissance, and included everything from the northern European reflections on apophatic theology (Meister Eckhart, the Cloud of Unknowing) to women's movements (Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena) to Catholic Spanish mystics influenced by Jewish kabbalah and Islamic mysticism (John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila).

Lutherans don't have much in the way of this because it was one of those things Luther specifically despised and repudiated. As far as he was concerned, as mystical and ecstatic charimsata were attempts to reach "the hidden God" outside of the authorized channel of God's self-discourse in his Word (both Scripture and Christ) and the sacraments (both the grand sacrament of the Incarnation and the sacramental rites of the church).

That said, I'm fairly sympathetic to conservative forms of this. Glossilalia, clearly, as some Scriptural precedent, and Paul seems to have been a practitioner of merkvah mysticism (a Second Temple era visionary experience in which the practitioner was carried in the heavenly chariot up through various levels of the heavens). I'm not entirely certain how these can be fruitful incorporated into individual spirituality or the corporate life of the church, but I'd like to study the Catholic and Orthodox experience more.